A crash of thunder wakes her. She's on the ground, in the rain, and for a little piece of time she exists as both, Max Caulfield on the lighthouse trail and Chloe Price on the path to the forest cave. That's not a healthy existence, so when a voice says "I believe young Chloe is awake now," dispelling it, she breathes a sigh of relief, even though the voice evokes new questions. The face that appears between her and the tree canopy is Steph's, but the voice wasn't. She struggles to place it as she struggles to sit up, and achieves both at about the same time.
Samuel. The voice belonged to Samuel.
She looks around and sees him, in his uniform and purple latex gloves, and with an actual broom in hand. Steph, wearing a maroon windbreaker, is helping her up… no, she's holding her down, saying something.
"What?"
"Take it easy for a second, Chloe."
"What?"
Now that she's been identified, she tries to remember where she is, and what happened. She's in the woods. It's starting to rain. She hears the water hitting the leaves above her, and it's not a good sound. The Blackwell dorm and the quad are maybe thirty yards away, past Samuel and the tree trunks.
The dorm!
She remembers, as another thunderbolt cracks the sky somewhere behind the mountains.
The Tobanga!
She struggles again to get up then, and again Steph holds her.
"Steph! I'm OK now. You can let me go. I'm good! It's time to burn that fucker."
"Wait, Chloe, slow down."
"I'm fine. I know I was out, but I'm fine now, we need to finish…"
She manages to get to her feet and pushes on forward towards the totem, while checking simultaneously her pockets to make sure her fall didn't break her bottles. They are intact somehow, but Steph is still holding her, annoyingly. Then it occurs to her why she's doing that.
"Listen, Steph," she lowers her voice. "If this is about Samuel, it's fine. I'll take the blame. I don't care what happens to me..."
But what Steph replies doesn't make any sense.
"No, Chloe. It's not that. It's not there."
"What? What are you talking about, Steph?"
"The Tobanga. It's not there. It's gone. That's why they got all the cops here."
Steph finally lets her go, and she stumbles forward.
"What? No! I saw… I saw it. It was there when I…"
She pushes forward through the trees.
How can it be gone? There is no way. Her memories are a mess again, the ones from earlier today are mixed up with the ones from earlier but later, which are actually from a dream she had about the future that cannot happen. She remembers Sera, and Dana, and the blood oath, and talking to the old cop, and Max, and adventuring with Max, in the storm and before the storm, and the totem, and the texts, and all of these things are swirling in her head as she grasps her way through the woods.
But then she sees it, the spot where the totem used to be, empty, with nothing but a hole in the earth and a small mound of dirt - like a cat's grave - to mark it. She stops, and a second later Steph catches up, wrapping her in a hug.
"Stop!" she shouts.
They stand there like that, panting to the muffled drums of the rain on leaves, until Chloe taps Steph's arm.
"OK, you can let me go now, Gingrich."
She does, and blushes, clearing her throat.
"Sorry. I was afraid you were going to bleed and pass out again if you got too close, and I really didn't want to deal with that. Again."
"Yeah," Chloe breathes, swaying. "Sorry about that. But how…? It was there last night. I saw it. Actually, I thought I saw it today, before I passed out. But if it's gone, then why…?"
She looks around, as if expecting Rachel to pop out from behind a tree suddenly, which is, of course, stupid. The Tobanga was moved. Not destroyed. Who would move it, and why? To protect it? Did they know she was coming to burn it down?
"Not sure about last night," Steph says, "but it was definitely already not there when you passed out. You got just about this close that time, and I saw the dirt mound there when you fell. Not that I got a good look at it, what with you, like, choking, rolling on the ground, groaning, and speaking weird. I dragged you back there and all of that stopped little by little, but you still wouldn't wake up, until Samuel came."
Chloe lifts her hand to look at the bracelet around her wrist, getting a flashback of Max and her rummaging through files in Wells's office.
"Someone broke into the custodial room," Samuel says behind them, making Chloe jump. "They took a shovel. It would have been faster with the axe, but they must not have wanted to make noise. Or maybe they didn't want to hurt it."
The word "axe" rings a bell that takes a while to fade away.
"Someone also broke into Rachel Amber's room," Samuel continues.
"Wow, that's crazy," Chloe says absently, staring at the hole in the earth.
The wind comes in gusts off the shore, the rain seemingly increasing with each gust.
"Arcadia Bay is not happy," Samuel says after a pause. "This is not a normal storm. You might want to find shelter. If you can."
With that, he walks off towards the dorm through the bushes.
Arcadia Bay can suck it, Chloe thinks, looking after him. Shelter. What we need to find is that fucking totem. Find it and burn it, before it's too late. She feels like it might be too late before long. By the time this storm ends, it will be too late.
"Don't know about shelter," Steph says meanwhile, "but I would like to get away from this spot at least."
"Last night," Chloe says. "They drug us, try to kill us, then, when that doesn't work, they hide the totem. All that just so we don't free Rachel? I don't get it, why is it so important to them to keep her out of the picture?"
"I don't know, Chloe," Steph says. "I don't think it's important for us to know that right now. We just need to know where it is. And maybe who took it. I can call Dana and see what she knows."
Who took it. Who stole it. The flashback from Wells's office is back, and with it, a printed page out of a student dossier.
"Fuck. I think I know who took it. And maybe even where. Let's go, Steph."
They go, back around the way they came, but it's not long before Chloe remembers that they have a transportation problem. She calls the mechanic.
"Done?" he repeats, incredulous. "We just brought it in. There are like five other cars here in front of you."
"I need the car right now, man. It's urgent. Can't you put two tires on it ahead of those people? Going to take you a minute."
"Two tires? Have you seen this truck? Because I had a guy look at it and without even taking it apart he could tell you need to replace every goddamn thing in there. Your belt is shot. You radiator is not repairable. Alternator, fuel pump, water pump, cylinder head gasket. I mean, this thing is a travesty. Two tires. Hell, you pay for that repair, I'll throw in all four tires for free. Used, not new."
"Sorry, I don't have ten thousand dollars or three weeks right now. So, pretty please, put two fucking wheels on so I can drive it? Used is fine."
"I don't have the wheels for it in stock. I have to order them from a junker. It's not going to be today."
"I need it now!"
"Take it to another shop then. As soon as you pay for the tow."
They both hang up at the same time, both probably using similar language once off the line.
Staying on foot is out of the question. Where can she get a car?
Down the slope below them is the Blackwell parking lot. She scans it instinctively for Frank's RV, wondering what kind of a favor she can offer him for him to let her borrow his ride for a couple of hours. A picture of Rachel behind the wheel of the RV flashes through her mind. Would Rachel's name work its magic? The point is moot, because Frank's RV is not there. Probably not the best place for business right now, what with the million cops guarding a hole in the ground.
She recalls a day in the junkyard a year or so back, when Frank, in one of his better moods, used one of the lemons there to show her how to hotwire a car. It's a feeble memory. She was high and not impressed, since the car was long dead and it was just Frank showing her some dumb wires and touching them together. No sparks. No engine starting. Boring. She wishes she paid better attention. Maybe she could borrow one of those cars now if she did. Then again, maybe it's a good thing she didn't. Steph wouldn't like it in jail.
As she stares at the cars in the parking lot while thinking all this, there is one car that stands out, and she hates that it does, because it's the blue idiot muscle car belonging to the one and only Herr Flattop.
She groans and sits down on the ground and expends the mother of all efforts to make the call while Steph watches her silently.
It rings for a long time. As she is about to hang up, he picks up.
"Chloe?"
"Hey," she says, wincing. "I need to… borrow your car."
"My car? What happened to your truck?"
"It's… in the shop. I just need it for a couple of hours."
"For what?"
"To get somewhere quickly. Can you just… let me borrow it?" Without being an asshole and asking me a million questions? It take another effort to keep that last part unsaid.
It may have come across anyway, because David is huffing and puffing for about 20 seconds before speaking again.
"I'm at work now and I can't leave. There's been… an incident."
"Yeah, I know. I'm here by the parking lot."
"You're here at Blackwell? Again?"
"I need a car. So I came here to borrow it."
He grumbles.
"You will have to wait."
"Fine," she says. "But just so you know: it's raining."
She hangs up and exhales and shakes her head, staring at the ground.
"Steph," she says. "This might have been the hardest thing I've ever done."
She can't even make it sound like a joke.
"I'm proud of you, Chloe," Steph says, putting her hands on her shoulders and giving them a squeeze.
Then she helps her up and they descend towards the parking lot and sit on the concrete fence near David's car. He appears on the steps about ten minutes later. He clocks them, then looks around the parking lot and the surrounding woods. His mustached face is frowning.
"Did you have anything to do with it?" he asks, when he's within regular voice distance.
"With what?" Chloe asks.
"Don't play dumb."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"My keys this morning weren't where I left them last night."
"What keys? I didn't take your keys. Look, man, if to borrow a car is too much to ask…"
"Someone broke into Rachel Amber's room last night," he says.
The name hits her like it does everyone, and for a moment she forgets what her story is supposed to be and can't come up with anything to say, rude or otherwise. Luckily, the great detective doesn't catch on and continues playing his hand, which lets her off the hook.
"Also the janitor room. And they stole the Indian totem."
Chloe sighs.
"OK, Steph. Give him back the totem so we can borrow the car before we drown in this rain."
"We don't have the totem," Steph says with a shake of her head.
His frown deepens, but he reaches into his pocket.
"No, I guess not. That took some real work. But I know you're involved somehow. I know my keys were moved. I see everything."
He holds the car key above Chloe's expectant hand as he says all this and stares at her, but she's recovered now and doesn't care. Finally, he lets it go.
"Two hours. And it better look the same. And smell the same."
"It'll smell better," Chloe says, unlocking the door.
The engine starts with a low rumble. Gears switch without grinding. The steering is too responsive. As they drive away, she sees David watching them in the rear view mirror. She gets a flashback of him battling Marc Jefferson in the bunker, and wonders if she should have asked him to come. But then she remembers how many times Max had to rewind for him to win that fight and drives on.
It takes another fifteen minutes to get to the NO TRESSPASSING sign on the fence by the old barn. The rain is making everything look more abandoned than usual. The gate is open, though, and they roll up nearly all the way to the barn doors.
"What is this place, Chloe?" Steph asks.
"This is where Prescott keeps his meth bunker."
And where the dark room was supposed to be.
"Oh. And why…?"
"I got a hint that it was him who stole the totem," Chloe says. "And since I'm pretty sure he wouldn't take it home, this was the next likeliest place."
Saying this, she pulls out the knife and gives it to Steph, handle-first.
"This time you take the knife, I take the gun."
"Chloe, I don't know what to do with a knife."
"Same thing you did with a gun that time. Just be threatening. Also take one of these and a lighter," she adds, handing over a Molotov. "You know, in case anything happens to me and shit."
"Chloe…"
She climbs out of the car into the rain, and Steph reluctantly follows.
"Chloe is so damn fearless," Max Caulfield says in that exact spot five months from now. "Where does that come from?"
I wish, she thinks, phasing back in. But she knows she's not fearless. She's putting on a brave face in front of Steph, but the truth is she's hella scared right now. She would almost prefer for this particular hint to turn out to be garbage. For the totem to be somewhere else. For the place to stay abandoned.
She has too many memories of this barn, real and otherwise, and none of them are good.
The strangely familiar rain is not helping. Neither does the gate left open, nor the huge padlock she remembers from her first visit missing from the barn doors.
Somebody's been here.
Somebody is here.
She wants to run away, but she pushes on instead. Not because she's fearless, but because she's a little crazy.
She knows where that comes from.
Signaling for Steph to be quiet, though anybody could hear that stupid muscle car rumbling from a mile away, she pulls on the door knob. The door opens silently, as though its hinges are oiled regularly.
The inside of the barn looks the same as last time, except there is a red pick up truck parked in the middle. The big black padlock is on the straw-covered floor. The tailgate of the truck is down and they can see the totem lying diagonally in the truck's bed.
Nathan Prescott is sitting facing them on top of the cabin, with a gun in his hand.
There is a cut across his lip and a splotch of dark skin under his left eye, but overall his face seems to have healed disappointingly well in the two days since their last meeting. The swelling has gone down. She thought she hit him harder than that.
His rolls his eyes.
"What the fuck. You?"
"Who did you expect?"
"Not you. What the fuck do you want? Can't you see I'm fucking busy? Didn't I tell you to forget you ever saw this place?"
Neither of them is pointing the gun at the other, and Nathan looks relaxed, if tired, but Chloe is tense as hell and is having trouble speaking in a normal tone. Having trouble understanding the bastard, too. He took the totem away from Blackwell and was waiting for someone else to show up? Who?
"What do I want? I want the fucking totem, Prescott."
"Whateverthefuck?" He stares are her for a minute, then jumps down into the truck bed, and now both of them are pointing guns. Both of them, also, seem to have trouble comprehending.
He looks at the totem, as though just becoming aware of it, then at Steph, then at her.
"So it was you who did this? How?"
"I did this? I did what?"
"Tell me how!"
"I don't know what the fuck you're talking about! I did this? No, you fucking did this. You took the totem and brought it here. It's right there in your fucking truck, Prescott!"
"I will fucking shoot your friend, I swear!" Swinging the gun to point it at Steph.
Don't freeze, Chloe thinks. Just don't freeze. Shoot him. Shoot him now.
"Wait, Nathan, Chloe," Steph says, putting up her hands. "Can we calm down for just a second? All of us? Obviously, something is going on here that we don't understand. Can we talk about it for two seconds?"
They stare at each other in silence, until Prescott finally says, "Talk then."
Chloe scoffs.
"The fuck? You took…"
"Chloe," Steph cuts her off.
Chloe looks at her with incredulous face, lifting her shoulders in a shrug, then finally sigh, rolls her eyes, and says, "We went to the dorms, trying to get to the totem. Saw a bunch of cops, went around through the woods. As we got close… I passed out and… had a… vision of you taking it. Figured you wouldn't take it home, so we came to the only other place I knew that you could be."
He looks at her, shakes his head.
"Bullshit."
"No, Nathan," Steph says. "That's what happened."
"So you wanted the totem, but you had nothing to do with me taking it?"
"What? That doesn't make…"
"We did not," Steph says. "We went to the campus looking for it. Until we got there, we had no idea it was gone. If we knew or had something to do with you taking it, we wouldn't go there, right?"
"Oh yeah?" he says. "And what about last night, huh?"
"What about it?"
"I saw you at the fucking dorm!"
"We were there to look for clues in Rachel's room. That had nothing to do with you."
"Yeah, and it's all just a big fucking coincidence, huh? Like I'm supposed to believe that!"
His face is losing its momentary calm.
"Nathan, we told you our side of the story. Can you tell us yours?"
"Don't analyze me, bitch. I pay people for that."
"I'm not. I'm just trying to understand what's going on."
He huffs and puffs for a minute, and it's infuriating, but Chloe somehow manages to stay silent until he finally waits himself out.
"Last night," he says, watching her, "I see you two idiots out in the quad at night, and like half an hour later I get this fucking splitting headache, and nosebleed, and noise in my ears, like… a fucking siren, a train horn. And it won't fucking stop. Won't let me sleep or anything. Worse than that dark room bullshit. So I take a bunch of pills and black out, and when I wake up I'm in my truck, parked inside the barn here, dirty as fuck, and that fucking thing is in the back."
Chloe and Steph exchange looks, which sets him off again.
"Ah! You lied, you lying fucking cunts! You did something!"
"No," Chloe says, making him stop and fix her with a hateful glare. "Last night, we went to Rachel's room to look for clues. Last thing I remember was feeling like someone was creeping behind us. When I woke up, we were both in my truck, parked across the train tracks in the junkyard, with a train five seconds away from smashing into us."
He scoffs, looks at both of them in turn, scoffs again, shakes his head.
"You're making this shit up, right? Just like you did with that dark room shit. This 'We both get them' bullshit again? I told you. There is no we."
"I'm just telling you what happened last night. I don't want any sort of 'We' with you Prescott, believe me."
"So what? What the fuck do you think it means? The only thing it fucking means is that you're as crazy as I am. Not a goddamn thing else. Shoulda taken your PTSD meds as prescribed, orphan. Now fuck off."
The guns have been drifting downwards throughout the conversation. At the end, Nathan raises his back up. Chloe ponders what her chances are of hitting him if it comes to a shootout. It seems easy. He's right there in front of them, on top of the truck bed, less than fifteen feet away. But is it? And Steph is there with her…
"I need that totem," she says.
"And I need you to get off my property. Now."
Flashbacks come and batter her like hard rain. She speaks, trying to prevent her voice and her hands from shaking as she slowly pulls a Molotov from her jacket pocket.
"Listen, Prescott. You're probably right. You and I are probably just a couple of crazies, like you said, so I'm just going to say this. I think destroying that fucking Tobanga is the key to bringing Rachel back from… wherever she is. It may be stupid, crazy, wrong, but it's what I believe, and I'm not leaving here without seeing if it works."
He watches the Molotov cocktail appear in her hand and her point a gun at it as one might watch a street magician produce a dozen large items from a clearly empty jar.
"Is that a Molotov?" he asks with a grin. "What are you gonna do with that? Set yourself on fire?"
"I'd rather burn that fucking thing out there in the yard. But if I have to, I will do it here."
"You would die," he says, turning the second half of the phrase into a question. "For her?"
It does seem crazy, and for a moment she's not sure if she's bluffing or not. For a moment, she can't say yes.
"She would die for me," she says instead.
Nathan laughs. His laughter is infuriatingly pure, jarringly joyful.
"Oh, I doubt that," he says.
"I don't give a fuck what you doubt," she shouts, hoping the wetness on her face is just rain.
"You don't know shit, Chloe," Frank Bowers shouts.
There is a crack of thunder, close by and the rain comes on hard.
He grins at her, then his grin freezes on his pale face.
He's looking over her head, through the open barn doors, but she's not about to let armed Nathan Prescott out of her sight. It could be a trick. There is Steph, though, and Steph doesn't think twice about following his gaze.
After a few seconds of silence, Steph says her name. Stepping sideways and rotating, instead of just turning around, Chloe finally looks, and gasps.
She didn't realize how dark it is outside suddenly. It can't be more than three o'clock, but it looks like midnight. Against the background of that darkness and sheets of water coming down from the sky, in the small circle in front of the doors, illuminated by the electric light inside the barn, stands a robed, cowled figure.
They just stand there, until Nathan finally speaks.
"So what the fuck is this supposed to be? Drama lab? The Tempest again? I don't do that shit anymore, so you better fuck off your act and costume, and show your face before I shoot you."
His voice is not entirely steady, but it sounds like a convincing enough bluff. If, in fact, he's bluffing. Either way, he's probably more convincing than Chloe would have been. As he speaks, he doesn't point the gun at the figure, but she does.
"Calm down, Nathan," a voice says. It's a girl's voice. The flashbacks start as she steps inside the doorway and removes her hood.
A twirling pencil. Redrum. 217.
"It's a raincoat, not a costume. And no act. I just didn't want to interrupt two armed people arguing. Didn't seem smart."
"Rachel Amber absolutely had sex with him," the same girl tells Max Caulfield, and Chloe remembers the name. Stella Hill.
"OK, so now you interrupted. What the fuck do you want? The pharmacy isn't open here."
"I'm not…" Stella says, glancing at Chloe. "Here for that. I'm here to… make sure you're OK."
He stares at her with his mouth open.
"Bitch, are you…? Has everybody lost their fucking minds at the same time?"
He is pointing the gun now. Despite which, Stella seems pretty chill.
"Hey, I'm just hired help," she says.
"Oh yeah? Hired by who?"
"I think you know."
He scoffs. "Why the fuck would…"
"You haven't been answering your phone."
He taps his pocket mechanically.
"Because I don't have it. I must have left it in the dorm."
"Well, that would explain that."
"OK, so you can run back to your boss and report you made sure I was OK."
"I don't know that Mexican standoff qualifies as 'being OK.'"
"What? Are you witty now, Hill? I said fuck off. I'll handle it."
"I was told to make sure you were OK…"
"You already said that, stupid."
"… and to encourage you to take the town property back to the school."
There is a silent pause, during which Nathan seems to be mouthing "whateverthefuck."
"How would they know about that?" he asks, though barely out loud, as if he's asking himself.
"It was suspected. The police is all over the campus because the totem is missing, and you were also missing and not picking up your phone. I was told to have you return with the totem if I found you both, and there you are."
"Oh yeah," he says, "I should just show up with a totem while the place is crawling with pigs."
"The police are not going to be a problem. Wouldn't be even if they caught you red-handed, as you know better than me. And they didn't catch you. Someone pulled a prank. You found it, returned the historic object back to the school. Nathan Prescott, an everyday hero."
As she says this, Stella smiles at Chloe and Steph, as though to invite them in on the joke. Which would have been awkward normally, but she's doing that in the presence of two guns. It seems like a weird dream.
"Pretty sure I pulled the prank," Nathan says thoughtfully. "Do they care about that at all?"
"Not as long as the totem is returned promptly," Stella says, hasting to add, "And as long as you're OK, of course."
Nathan scoffs.
"I'm pretty fucking far from OK."
"Well, you will be," Stella says, and Chloe thinks to herself: She was standing there, behind me, for a while. She heard me. She heard me talk about wanting the totem.
"This totem is not going back," she finally speaks.
Nathan and Stella both turn to look at her. Stella then looks at Nathan, as if waiting for him to explain what the crazy person is talking about, but he just grins, so eventually she says, "Chloe, right? Why wouldn't it go back?"
"Because I'm going to destroy it."
"That's insane. Why would you want to do that?"
"I have my reasons."
"You have reasons to destroy a wood carving that's older than Arcadia Bay?"
"Yep. Do you have reasons to keep it from being destroyed?"
"What, you mean, like, aside from common sense?"
"Yeah, aside from that. Are you in the club, Stella?"
"The club?"
"Vortex Club."
She turns to Prescott after a pause.
"Nathan, am I in the club?"
But he just grins.
"I am not in the club."
"Then you shouldn't care."
"I wouldn't, but the job is to bring Nathan and Tobanga back."
"Who hired you?"
"You don't need to know that."
"Well, you can tell them you could only do half of it. Unless you want to jump on the gun for the stump."
"I'm not going to jump on any guns," Stella replies with a shake of her head, though still calmly. Chloe suddenly wonders if she's on Xanax or some shit.
"You can borrow mine,' Nathan says. "Shoot it out."
Stella looks at him, at Chloe, at Steph, shakes her head again.
"Listen, Chloe. Whatever you think you're going to accomplish by destroying it, it's not going to work."
"Then there's nothing for you to worry about."
"I'm worried about you destroying the Tobanga, and going to jail, only because you have no idea what you're doing. You have a lot to learn, Chloe."
"Learning is not really my thing. What's it going to be, Prescott? Inside or out?"
"Chloe," Stella says. "Just walk away. You can't undo what you did."
There is silence.
Even Nathan stops grinning.
It hurts, and takes away her breath, but she forces herself to breathe again.
"I… wouldn't do what I'm trying to undo."
"But you did."
"Yeah?" she asks, raising her gun. "Like I drove my truck and parked it on the train tracks last night? Like Prescott stole the totem?"
Stella takes a visible half a minute to compose herself.
"No," she says, "not exactly like that, since I think you remembered some of what you did in the cave."
"Yes I did. And I went back there, and burned that fucking totem down, and it felt good. So I'll do the same with this one."
"It did nothing. And burning Tobanga is not going to do anything, either. It's too late. The storm is already here. And Rachel is gone."
Rachel's name hits her, like it does every time, but this is the first time it's going to make her murder somebody. Nathan climbs down from the truck bed.
"What the fuck are you saying?" he says.
Chloe points the gun at Stella's face.
"If that's true, then you're dead. Right after you tell me the names of everyone else involved in this shit."
Stella shakes her head.
"I told you, you have a lot to learn about Arcadia Bay, Chloe. That's not how the battles are fought here."
She scoffs.
"I've lived in this shithole all my live, bitch."
"And yet you're so clueless. The circle is set. Nathan, I'm afraid you'll have to shoot them, in self-defense."
Prescott, who's been sort of stumbling about, confused for the last minute, lifts his gun. Thinking do not freeze, do not freeze, Chloe tries to point the gun at him, but discovers that she can't move. She's literally frozen. Nathan Prescott, meanwhile, frowns at the gun in his hands even as its barrel turn towards Chloe.
"Nathan, don't!" Steph shouts.
His face grows angry.
"Don't ever tell me what to do! I'm so sick of people trying to control me!"
Here it comes, Chloe thinks, right after he says that.
But he turns towards Stella instead.
"You! Section 8. You think I'm gonna shoot some rando just because you tell me to?"
"It was just a suggestion, Nathan. She's armed and was about to shoot you."
He turns back to Chloe again.
"Is that right, Price?"
Chloe would like to clarify, point out the conditions, but somehow what comes out of her, and quick, is a simple "No." It's almost like someone else is controlling her.
Nathan shrugs, turning to Stella again, and spreading his arms wide, "See?"
But she doesn't see. Her eyes are closed and there is a sudden gust of wind and water throwing open the barn doors and a whale song, and as this fog hits Nathan, he spins and shoots.
There is a scream.
The bullet hits the bottle in her hand, and for a split second Chloe sees herself turn into a fireball, but that's just fear. The bullet only shatters the glass, causing the gasoline to splash all over the floor and her clothes and shoes. Also, it causes her to unfreeze.
"Steph, get down!" She shouts, while getting down herself. They duck behind the tractor, just as he shoots again. The bullet hits the metal and ricochets with a deafening ring. Remembering her own gun, Chloe shoots around the tractor without looking. Just wasting bullets. She wonders how many she has left.
"Chloe," Steph says behind her. "The Molotov."
She has it in one hand, lighter in the other. It's the last one they have.
"Here. Give me that. Take the gun and cover me."
Steph does take the gun, though her covering anything is less pronounced. Chloe, sparks a flame with shaking hands, while trying to be on the lookout for Nathan or Stella, who have both been silent. Her sleeve catches on fire, but thankfully not her hands or hair. Not yet, anyway. She's trying to put it out with her free hand when Nathan appears suddenly on the other of the tractor. Luckily, Steph is right there. She has him in her sights, but as Chloe watches, wincing in anticipation of a shot, none comes.
"Oh, Christ," Frank Bowers says, after taking the gun out of Max Caulfield's hands. "You're more like Abbott and Costello. Nice piece. I'll consider it interest on your loan."
Oh fuck, Chloe think as she phases in.
"Nathan, no!" Steph shouts. Prescott is lifting his gun. The rag of the Molotov in her hand is completely on fire.
Chloe Price, you are about to die.
No.
No fucking way.
There is a choice to be made, and somehow Chloe heaves the Molotov into the bed of the truck. It breaks and pours fire. Chloe sees it rise like a dragon, sees the flames dance, feels a gust of wind and hears a crack of thunder and what sounds like a raven's caw.
The fire goes whoosh and suddenly the entire barn is up in flames.
She watches it in awe, forgetting about Nathan for a second.
But only a second, because Steph is in danger too. She spins around, prepared to be the human shield, if needed, to take whatever bullets he has left, but he's no longer there. It's just Steph, alone, the gun limply in her hand.
She turns towards the fire again and gets closer. The totem is fully engulfed in spiraling flames.
There is smoke everywhere.
"Chloe we have to get out of here," Steph shouts in her ear, pulling her.
She lets herself be pulled, while craning her neck to keep a good look on the Tobanga. Yeah, the fucker is burning, alright. They make their way to the entrance. There is no sign of either Nathan or Stella, but the barn doors are closed. Chloe pushes against them. They won't budge. Blocked with something.
Above them, there are several holes in the roof, but the way up is on fire. She remembers the hole under the wall and tries to guide Steph there, but there is fire blocking their way there as well.
In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni.
We enter the circle after dark.
And are consumed by fire.
It doesn't matter, a thought comes as though from someone else, even if she is freed, as long as one of you dies today.
She hears coughing, and its her own.
Steph stumbles and is having a hard time getting up. The smoke is burning her lungs and eyes. She remembers the hatch, the bunker.
"Come on, Steph."
She pulls her across the barn until she finds it. There is a new padlock on it. She takes the gun from Steph, aims it through the shaking hands and blurry vision and the cough, and pulls the trigger. It just clicks.
Is she out of bullets?
Did she waste her last bullets shooting aimlessly?
Is that why Steph couldn't shoot?
She remembers Max trying to shoot Frank in the junkyard, and the gun clicking emptily.
No fucking way.
She's about to puke out her lungs, but she bring the revolver up to her face and pulls out the drum. There is one bullet in it. She aligns it with the barrel and clicks the drum back in. Steph is on her knees, trying to get under the wall of smoke for breathable air.
Chloe ducks with her, finds the padlock, takes aim at an angle, prays, and shoots. It ricochets loudly again, seemingly a millimeter away from her face, but the padlock is wrecked. Gleefully, she pulls it off and lifts the hatch door. The air below the floor is sweet like ice cream, as they basically tumble down the the stairway, but the smoke is already billowing behind them into the corridor. Out in the barn, a major beam crushes down with a tremor. The whole thing is probably about to come down.
The sees the abandoned mill on fire, its roof caving in, empty cages.
The door. The code lock on the door.
"Hang on, Steph," she rasps. "Hang on, I got this."
She punches in 1337.
Nothing happens.
What the fuck? Was there another button to press to unlock it? Did she mistype?
The smoke fills the hallway as she punches the number in again.
It doesn't work.
The fucker must have changed it after she told him she knew it.
Her fingers punch in again, even as she stops seeing the keypad.
Steph is on the floor, with her back against the door. Chloe watches as she falls sideways. There's no air. She can't breathe. She grabs her, tries to tell her to get up, to pull her up, but her legs won't… They can't…
She sit down next to her.
Just for a second.
Just for a breather.
I don't want to die here.
I don't want Steph to die.
Steph doesn't deserve this.
Please.
I have to pull her out.
I have to.
There is darkness.
No flashbacks. No dreams. No hallucinations.
Just darkness.
Chloe in the dark room.
Curled up on her side.
She sees darkness. Hears silence.
Fuck it.
I hope it worked.
There is a crack of thunder.
She's being lifted.
Up. Up. Up, Chloe.
It's the Thunderbird.
Huge.
Wing span of a hundred yards.
It's lifting her up above Arcadia Bay, above Blackwell, even above the lighthouse.
She sees her house, the diner, the cemetery when her dad is buried.
Is that where it's taking me?
To the cemetery?
But the bird circles around and with a beat of a wing flies south, beyond town, over the woods, towards a column of smoke. Rising from the ruins of a collapsed, burned down barn.
Up, Chloe.
"Wake up, Price! Wake up!"
She wakes up and throws up, and throws up again, pulling herself away from the vomit to the side, hugging the cool, wet earth with her face. Steph is on all fours beside her, doing the same thing.
But the voice. The voice.
She cranes her neck to look, to see. There is the sky, partly cloudy; there is the pile of burning wood that used to the be the barn; there is the blue muscle car in front of the smoking pile, windows busted, a beam across its hood. She turns over on her back and moves her head around and finally.
Finally she finds her.
Kneeling next to her, her face so close. Her eyes, her lips, her hair.
Her earring.
Her hands.
Her name hits her as it does everyone, every time.
"Rachel."